


Fixity

by Morbane



Category: Charlotte's Web - E. B. White, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Astronomy, Because #yuletide, Constellations, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Crossover, Fix-It, Gen, blame #yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 03:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athena sees merit in a weaver's work.<br/>Or, <i>ad astra per alas porci</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voksen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/gifts), [greenlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenlily/gifts).



The fair-ground was deserted. The faint, buttery odor of popcorn and hot-dog frying lingered over it, turned sour by souring straw and the other remains of the fair. In the empty stables, the breeze that carried these scents lifted only a single strand of hay, and nothing stirred inside the shed where the pigs had been kept, except for a fly that bumbled into a web woven at the height of a man’s eye and buzzed indignantly for a few minutes, to no effect.

But the weaver of that web had gone before the fly.

A crescent moon that had been pressed into the high blue September sky like the indent of a fingernail began to shine down on the dust and beaten grass. First one star, then another, appeared. Zuben-el-genubi rose, and near it — where exactly is hard to say — two eyes blinked, and a tenebrous owl swooped down from the heavens to perch on a post and scrutinize the spider’s web — first with one eye, then the other.

“You came from a humble town,” observed the owl, reading the word in the web, “of a humble father, and humble trade, and yet it is only now that you have learned humility.”

The dead spider was silent.

“Stubborn yet!” said the owl. Twisting her head, the owl plucked a feather from her wing, and laid the feather along the rafter nearest the spider. “Even if you sleep,” she said, “you’ll keep no secrets from me.”

The spider stirred.

“Say who you are,” said Noctua.

“Charlotte,” said the spider, with some dignity. “Charlotte Araneus Cavatica, though you needn’t use it all at once.”

“No indeed,” said Noctua (who, for herself, was known as Machanitis, Gigantoleteira, Pronoea, Oxyderces, and Ergane; and at other times Agoraea, Sthenias, Apaturia, and Soteira). “I shall name you as I knew you, Arachne. What a tapestry you have made even of your name!”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Charlotte, “and if we’re acquainted, I’m afraid I don’t recall it.”

The fly in the web had stopped struggling. Lifting off her perch, the owl seized it with her beak — and there was not even a crunch, because it had not been eaten by a mortal creature. It was merely gone.

Charlotte said nothing, nor could she move, but she was deeply uncomfortable. It was clear that the owl meant to intimidate her.

“Don’t be frightened,” said Noctua sweetly. “For you are not a spider, and I am not an owl. Would you like to see the truth of things?”

 

She did not wait for an answer, but reached out towards the spider’s body, flexing her claw as if it were a hand. As that claw drew near, Charlotte felt more frightened — and what sense did it make, for her to be afraid of anything, now that she was dead? — because she began to remember a hand whose gift was dread.

The claw came to rest above the spider’s eyes, and it was indeed a hand, resting on a forehead. The maiden of Lydia gazed upon the bright-eyed goddess of Athens, and bowed her head, and was amazed.

“This is my command,” said Athena: “Remember me.”

So Charlotte recited the tales of Athena that had been placed in her memory: Athena’s birth from Zeus, and her part in the creation of Pandora; Athena at Cyprus, and in Ionia; Athena’s olive tree and her flute; Athena and Perseus; Athena and Erichthonios.

Arachne, as she once was, might have commented sharply on the cruelty of the goddess’ wrath against Medusa, or the kindness that Athena had shown to the Koronides and the Pandareides, that had not been shown to her. Charlotte had absorbed Arachne’s pride. But Arachne had now earned Charlotte’s circumspection; Charlotte felt wary of a goddess who had chosen to enlighten a spider.

Athena said nothing as Charlotte spoke, until Charlotte described the Palladium at Troy.

“Do you know where the Palladium is now?” said the goddess.

Charlotte searched her new-old memories, but they did not help her. “I don’t know _the_ Palladium,” she said doubtfully. “But I know of palladium — it is a silver metal element.” This was, she felt, a sophisticated grasp of things for a farm spider.

“They fashion that into jewelry,” said Athena. “But it does not adorn me. What you describe was named for a rock among asteroids,” said the goddess, “and _that_ was filed for me with a number, as a clerk might record a donation to the Temple. Yet the name that passes from the rock to the metal is hollow, with none of my glory. Though the statue that fell from heaven has returned there, it is diminished. Olympus is forgotten.”

Charlotte waited in silence for the goddess’ conclusion, and tried to make an art of waiting. Even the sky waited: since Noctua had swept down from the sky, the stars had not changed position. Charlotte was fixed in twilight.

“You are impatient, girl of Lydia,” Athena said. “You were wont to busy your hands with all manner of things, and therein lay your boast. What is your art now?”

Charlotte said, delicately, “Why does a victor over Titans remember her victory over a girl of Lydia? What is it that you want?”

The last promise Athena had made Arachne was that she would hang forever, and Athena had earned her epithet of vengeance returning.

“You are right,” said Athena of the glittering eyes. “You are not important. But it is from me, little spider, that you gain your craft — and as an artisan, I work with what falls to my hands. That is you.”

She cast a light from her hands onto the web that read HUMBLE, and the web shone, just as it had when it had been newly made, and morning dew turned its interstices into stars. “Once you used your skill to spite the immortal gods,” said Athena. “But what is this? Now you have died defying another’s mortality.”

 

“I will place you among the stars,” Athena decreed, “and you shall write our histories in them: as once Zeus my father placed his heroes there, you shall enshrine us again. I guide men in their astronomical arts. Yearly they look farther into the skies. You shall weave for them shapes to discover there. You shall go beyond Draco and beyond Cygnus in your weaving.”

There was something strange about this. Charlotte wondered if she ought to feel honoured; she wondered if she ought to feel _redeemed_. But it is generally true that someone asks for a second chance when they have been disappointed in their first. Arachne had died of shame. Charlotte had lived a full life as a spider, with many friends, bravery and pragmatism, and occasional grandiloquence. So the part of her that was Arachne did not feel grateful for Athena for her new, promoted existence: instead she felt grateful to Charlotte for _hers_.

Once-mighty Athena needed a weaver, but the weaver did not need Athena.

Clear-sighted Athena looked into her heart anyway, and divined her thoughts.

“You have always erred in determining the gods’ gifts,” said the goddess of workers. “In your long-ago life, you denied me as the source of your skill, even though you delighted in challenging me. In this life, your talent was a mystery to you, but you accepted it. Take from me, not life — there is no growth or change for a mortal in the heavens, but only slow disfigurement, as of stone under water. My gift to you is a task to put your skill to use.

“The stars fade,” said the goddess. “You, a mortal, cannot bestow immortality. Pigs may not be butchered or betrayed, but they still die, though they may be remembered. Spiders die. You and I have the same design — to stretch out the span of things. We are workers, and we will discard dross, but we hate to cut the threads of gold; these we will return to the weave. I have selected you to perform a task you are already shaped to.”

And so with persuasive words the goddess of wise counsel inspired her handmaiden.

There are flies in the stars, but Charlotte did not put them there, and does not bother herself with catching them. There are no sounds of the barnyard — no cacophony of geese, or songs of ‘Peabody’ or ‘Phoebe’. There are no aromas of buttermilk or rotten eggs. But there are frogs among goddesses, and gods among sheep; Erichthonios is there, and Medea, and Chrysaor, and Thalassa, but there is also a nebula shaped like the Zuckermans’ barn, and one like a ferris wheel.

There are spider-children in the shadows, and there is more than one transcendent pig.

**Author's Note:**

> Around this time last year in #yuletide, someone brought up the idea of _Charlotte's Web_ fix-it, I vaguely suggested Greek and Roman mythology, and you, recipients, enthusiastically seconded this idea. I hope it works.


End file.
